See the Rankings in the Slideshow Below

"Earning a college degree can increase your skill set, job prospects and net worth. But with rising college costs, where you choose to get that degree from can make a big difference," said SmartAsset.

The Rankings

Overall, MIT is ranked as the best value college, while Harvard, Massachusetts Maritime Academy, WPI and UMass Boston round out the top five.

Boston College was ranked 10th on the list of Best Value Colleges.

The Method

SmartAsset looked at five factors to determine the best value colleges and universities: tuition, student living costs, scholarship and grant offerings, retention rate and starting salary.

To capture the true cost of attending a school, they included the tuition (using in-state tuition for public schools where applicable), student living costs (including room and board, books, supplies, transportation and other personal expenses) and the average scholarships and grants offered to students of the school.

To find out what students get in return, SmartAsset looked at student retention rate (the percent of students that re-enrolled at the institution the following year) and the average starting salary.

They gave 25% weighting to starting salary, tuition, and living costs; and 12.5% weighting to scholarships & grants and student retention rate to come up with a ranking of schools in our analysis.

With that ranking, they created an index where the number one school was assigned 100.